By CHris Churchill Business writer

Published 1:00 am, Tuesday, July 13, 2010

SCHENECTADY -- Speakers at a Monday conference hammered home a theme: The Capital Region's waterfronts are a missed economic opportunity.

That's not a new message. Many in the region have bemoaned the condition of those waterfronts, noting that Albany has a highway strung along its piece of the Hudson while Schenectady and Troy have river banks overly devoted to decaying industry.

Other cities use water to draw tourists, shoppers and boaters -- but Capital Region cities largely fail to do the same.

Speakers said the transformation has already begun -- at least in isolated spots.

Examples included Albany's improved riverside Corning Preserve or Troy's waterfront Farmers' Market -- both made possible because the Hudson is so much cleaner than it was decades ago.

More changes may come: The Rensselaer waterfront is where developer U.W. Marx, a Troy company, is planning a $300 million project designed to add offices, apartments and a marina and promenade to the east side of the Hudson.

In Schenectady, the Galesi Group in Rotterdam is working to remake the polluted American Locomotive Co. site, which sits on prime land along the Mohawk River. Homes and offices are planned there, too, despite the rough condition of the land.

"We're a victim of our own history," said David Buicko, a Galesi executive, as he explained the difficulty of waterfront development to Monday's crowd. "We've lined our waterfronts with highways, rail yards and factories. From a developer's point of view, that makes the waterfront difficult to access."

But speakers also noted the unique rewards of waterfront development -- and the inspiring successes of other cities. In San Antonio, Texas, for example, a small trickle of a river (compared to the Hudson) has been turned into the city's top attraction.

Speakers said the Capital Region's rivers have not received the sustained attention needed to bring similar success. The rivers here might even suffer from an identity crisis.

"When you talk about New York state rivers, the lower Hudson crowds everybody else out of the room," said John Cronin, director of the Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, an environmental research group in Dutchess County.

Mighty Waters, like most conferences, was about talk and discussion. That talk could very well fade into nothing, like ripples in a river.

But attendees -- a group that included about 125 elected officials, environmentalists, a few business people, and more -- stressed that the conference should lead to concrete steps.

A Tonko spokesman said Mighty Waters cost about $2,000 and was funded mostly from the operating budget of Tonko's congressional office. That amount does not include travel and fees for keynote speaker Ann Breen of the Waterfront Center in Washington.